Mind Massage I
Mind Massage II
Mind Massage III (Coming Soon)
_______________________________________________________
Hi, my name is Christian Flint. I am the Director and CEO for Mind Design Unlimited. I have also been a musician now for more than 35 years. One of my favorite interests has been how music and sound affects the mind and body. I usually spend many hours in a month just perusing various Medical and Neuroscience Journal Articles in looking for new research related to mind body healing and psychoacoustics.
Over my lifetime, I have come to realize the very powerful bond between sound and how our mind and body responds to it. For most people, there is no denying the power of music. Most people have a favorite band or artist. Most people have a favorite genre of music. So, there is no debate that as human beings, we gravitate towards music and sounds that are pleasing to us.
After I began learning and studying music, I began to wonder why humans tend to enjoy music, and then notice how music can affect our moods. Oftentimes, depending on our own moods, we will choose a specific genre of music or a specific artist that reflects that mood, or that can bring us out of our mood. We do not have to look far to recognize how music can play a role in how we feel at the moment, as well as how and what we think in the moment, in some cases.
As I spent my years of study and research, not only in Neuroscience and music, but in Mind Body Healing, I stumbled across research from the last 100 years that strongly showed the impact of notes, tones and sounds that directly affect specific regions of our brain. I also found notes and tones that literally affect the various organs of the body. It was also very amazing to me that much of this core research and findings were over 70 years old.
As a musician, I was quite capable to begin looking at the tones and notes that impact our minds and bodies. And, as I began to play and record these tones and notes, I began to find patterns that kept repeating. And, these patterns seemed to sound very inconsistent and unpleasant at first. But, as they kept repeating, there seemed to be a familiar constancy in their pentameter.
For instance, most music we hear today is in the 4/4 timing signatures. This means that each quarter note gets 4 beats within one measure of music. So, if you are counting in a time signature, you can listen to a snare drum usually hitting two times in one measure, in sequence with the bass drum hitting every other note, still equating to two beats within a measure. This time signature represents 99% of popular music today.
As I began to break apart patterns and sequences of tones and waveforms deemed to be therapeutic, I began to notice that each waveform and pattern have their own unique “rhythm” and tempo that seems to be inherent. And, as I began to play these notes and tones together, many began to fall in place or “alignment” as a “sequence”. This, I was not expecting.
And, I delved deeper, I began to see these notes and tones coming together in much the same way as a mechanical machine works. There is a sequence of events that must occur for the machine to function properly. And, in most every machine, the sequence will repeat itself.
This would be much like our human body, even. Our own body requires every organ to function properly for optimum health. When one organ is not functioning properly, it can often negatively affect other organs and their natural function. And, the same as an automobile. Most everything under the hood of a car must work in “concert” together for your car run efficiently.
So, as I began to construct, deconstruct, reverse and interchange these tones and notes, I began to find notes and tones that worked together in sequence or in “concert” with one another. And, the time signature that they kept repeating had no regularity or “beat” to them at first. But, as I just let the tones and notes play together, the rhythm and patterns began to take shape. What happened next was brilliant.
The tones and notes began to create their own unique “chords” or combined sound sequences. Binaural beats already shows that two distinctive tones played individually into each human ear, can create a “third” tone in the brain. Arguably, this tone is in response to how your brain / mind is interpreting each tone introduced to each side of your brain.
As I began to take these “three tones” that would occur normally and naturally, that your brain is hearing and producing, I played them together in unison. After several minutes, you hear a “beat” that forms in its own sequence. This beat and sequence begins to produce two more notes additionally. One above the lower frequency and one above the higher frequency. Then, as you play those 5 notes together, 2 more notes appear. Again, one below the lower frequency and one above the higher frequency. It always seemed to come in pairs. Yet, the cycle or “beat” is not in a 4/4 time signature.
Over the years, I began to keep records of notes and tones and their combinations. I began to see them intersect with popular healing tones and notes such as the Solfeggio Frequency. Uniquely, as these tones evolved, I could see them coming back, full circle into the cyclical tones (or combined tones we can call “chords”) that resonate the healing tones and frequencies that were first discovered over 70 years ago.
Furthermore, as I kept expanding and working with these tones, I began using different instruments and sampled tones to experiment with these sounds. I began to see how the timbre of the pitch and tone could evolve utilizing different instrumentation. For example, there is a reason that certain instruments are much more popular than others. Piano and guitar, for instance, rely on the vibration of strings. These steel strings of the guitar and piano seem to “strike a chord” or resonate with acceptance, when we listen too or “interpret” music.
Much like playing a popular song on the trumpet that was originally made famous by a guitar or piano, resonates differently within us. We may quickly recognize the song, but now it feels and interprets differently to our senses.
It is very difficult to construct a very good explanation of my findings with these descriptions and analogies. While I was incredibly glad to be stumbling on a “musical” cycle that tends to repeat itself, I was also quickly discovering its relationship to how the human mind and body resonates in attunement as these tones and frequencies do. I was amazed at how Mind / Body attunement tends to resonate and create vibrational frequencies that can be interpreted as notes and tonal frequencies that are audible. In turn, we can go in reverse. We can create vibrational tones that affect the human mind and body.
The great news about vibrational and tonal frequencies is, with new technology today, we can cause them to be a persistent tone, without having to restrike the note or chord consistently. Today, with modern synthesizers and computerized waveform creators (called Tonal Generators) we can program one note or frequency that will play or vibrate perpetually. This works great, up to a point.
With modern computerized tonal generation, the body begins to respond to the note. But uniquely, the body and mind only benefits from it for a short time. The slight variation (inconsistencies) of the notes tonal pattern, are what our body and mind tends to resonate and respond too. This is probably why humans much more enjoy the sound of a human voice vibration instead of a computerized voice singing the same waveform. Or, the plucking of a single note on a guitar, above the computer generated tone / waveform emitted by a computer.
It seems that even in extreme measures, our brains, minds and bodies love the organic resonance of various frequencies and tones. Even better, our body tends to become stronger and even “heal” in response to these varied combined tones and frequencies that it resonates with. Our bodies tend to not only respond strongly, but almost “feed” off of specific tones and wave-forms emitted somewhat organically.
In truth, it has taken me years to compile my data, and in turn, I seemed to have come full circle to much of what has already been discovered. I was not out so much to prove or disprove former research. I just needed to immerse myself into the sciences and understandings of what we already know, and how it applies to the human mind and body.
Today, I work to construct sounds, music and tonal compositions that I still quantify as “psychoacoustical sound performances”. These compositions involve many layers of sounds and tones that are known to resonate within your mind and body in what is interpreted to be a therapeutic manner. Unlike any other artist or scientist I have come across, I have worked very hard to develop waveform compositions that will sound unique, but familiar in some cases. I have worked hard to involve instruments and sounds that are organic and vibrate organically. But, I also must include the sounds and tonal generations of the wave-forms in order to create the layered affect to encompass the combination of notes and tones I discussed above. In part, I am still waiting on science and musical engineers to design tonal generators that will emit the sounds and combinations that I have discovered.
I have made every attempt to combine the tones and cycles of frequencies that begin to resonate together when introduced together. The most simple version a musician would understand, would be a “chord” of notes. A chord can be two or more notes played together, simultaneously. As you can hear within these recordings, the sounds and notes begin to resonate together, but still apart. The notes played, will often be played apart from one another (unlike a chord), but in effect, will resonate to a cycle which produces a “tempo” eventually.
In order to heighten the effectiveness, I have included on certain tracks, what will sound like a heart beat. This is intentional. The heart beat will slow down and as you continue to listen in contrast, you can begin to hear the tempo in question that is created by the resonance of the various frequencies and tones that I have generated together. Thanks greatly today for digital multi-tracking, can I reduce the hiss, hum and distortion that sometimes become audible with layering and producing effects. This would have sounded too discombobulated and built to a constant cycle feedback (unpleasant tone) that would have been uncontrollable to record for more than 3 -5 minutes at a time prior.
